FIRST READING: Terrorist sympathizers on Parliament Hill – Canada's Palestinian extremism problem
Mahmoud Kahlil, who was invited to a Parliament Hill reception just last year, pledged fealty to Hamas at a rally in Calgary
Author of the article:
Tristin Hopper
Published Oct 12, 2023 • Last updated 3 hours ago • 7 minute read
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Screenshot of a video from a Thanksgiving weekend rally in Calgary to praise Oct. 7 terror attacks that killed more than 1000 Israelis. Speaker Mahmoud Kahlil, who uploaded and annotated the video, called for more attacks and said to cheers "we're going to be the nightmare here." PHOTO BY INSTAGRAM
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The All Out For Palestine rallies
that appeared in every major Canadian city over the Thanksgiving weekend were without precedent. Never in Canadian history has the country seen coordinated, multi-city demonstrations convened for the singular purpose of celebrating an act of terror against civilians.
But the only thing materially new about the rallies is their scale and the unambiguous horror of the atrocities being celebrated. For years, Canada has featured no shortage of rallies cheering terror or groups openly calling for the violent destruction of Israel. In some cases, the figures at the centre of it all have even been feted on Parliament Hill.
“We are your men, Mohammad Deif!” went a celebratory chant repeated by a crowd of several dozen outside Calgary City Hall on Monday.
Deif is the Hamas commander
credited as the mastermind of the Oct. 7 terror attacks against Israel. The chant was led by Mahmoud Kahlil, a Palestinian activist who has previously been at the head of marches in Montreal explicitly calling for Israel’s end.
In April, he led a crowd in front of Montreal’s Israel consulate and led a chant of “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” The slogan, which refers to the Jordan River and the Mediterranean Sea, is an explicit rejection of any “two state solution” and references the complete purge of the State of Israel from the Levant.
The Oct. 7 attack, which resulted in the indiscriminate massacre of 1,200 Israelis – much of it livestreamed – was dubbed Operation Al-Aqsa Flood by Hamas. On Monday, Khalil praised “the flood” and pledged to “ride” it into the centre of Jerusalem.
His Monday ended with a call for supporters to “be the nightmare” in Canada. “We’re going to be the nightmare here. We’re going to be the nightmare in Gaza,” he said.
Video of the speech was posted to Instagram by
Khalil himself, where it was
picked up by the X account Documenting Antisemitism.
The opening minutes of the attack were characterized by Hamas fighters dropping onto a music festival via parasail, where they began opening fire on fleeing crowds. Survivor accounts
described multiple women being raped next to the bodies of dead friends before being executed.
Also on Monday, Khalil would post a photo illustration to his Instagram showing Hamas fighters in parasails descending onto the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem.
Just 10 months ago, Khalil was among the VIP guests at a Parliament Hill gathering for “Palestinian solidarity” attended by MPs from every sitting federal party, including the Green Party’s Elizabeth May,
then transport minister Omar Alghabra and onetime NDP leadership candidate Niki Ashton.
NDP MP Niki Ashton, Liberal MP Salma Zahid, Green Leader Elizabeth May, and Liberal MP Omar Alghabra at a Nov. 29 International Day of Solidarity with the Palestinian People. At least one attendee was active in pro-terror rallies over the Thanksgiving Weekend. PHOTO BY TWITTER
Khalil’s extremist views were no secret at the time. Then, as now, they were frequently posted to his social media; a cursory search would have found him praising Hamas rocket attacks or endorsing the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine — a registered terror group.
But the Liberal MP who organized the event, Salma Zahid, told Postmedia at the time that Khalil’s presence was due to invitations being “circulated widely” and staff not having time to “research the history of every attendee that responded.”
In just the last few years, multiple demonstrations in Montreal and Toronto have featured speakers calling for Israel’s eradication, or praising indiscriminate Hamas rocket barrages into Israeli territory. In several cases, they were large enough to attract coverage from Israeli media.
In April 2022, a speaker at a Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions rally in Toronto
told an assembled crowd, “Who is the biggest existential threat to the existence of Israel?” “We are!” came the reply.
The protest was livestreamed by self-described “human rights activist” Aliya Hasan. Hasan’s own speech would praise “Palestinian freedom fighters” who were responsible for orchestrating Israel’s “deadliest attacks that it has seen in the last 15 years.”
In a statement at the time, Conservative MP Melissa Lantsman noted it went well beyond the boundaries of a mere pro-Palestine rally. “This is not a protest. This is full-on antisemitism in our streets,” she wrote.
In May 2021, a pro-Israel protest in Montreal was surrounded and pelted with rocks by counter-demonstrators carrying Palestinian flags. “Rocks being launched against peaceful pro-Israel demonstrators and
#antisemitic slurs being yelled at them. This is NOT the Montreal and Canada that I know and love,” Liberal MP Anthony Housefather said in a social media post at the time.
The Montreal rock-throwing would occur around the same time as a pro-Palestinian car rally in Winnipeg that CBC would note
was characterized by the chant “from the river to the sea, Palestine will be free.” Among the attendees in the YYC Convoy for Palestine
was Alberta NDP MLA Irfan Sabir.
Last weekend’s All Out for Palestine rallies were primarily organized by Palestinian Youth Movement (PYM), a group that Canadian Jewish groups have long warned has a history of cheering terror and advocating for violence.
In May, they organized a Montreal rally denouncing the 75th anniversary of Israel’s founding. Convened outside what they called the “Zionist consulate,” it was dubbed “75 years of Nakba” — nakba being the Arabic word for “catastrophe.”
In August 2021 a
PYM march near Yonge-Dundas Square in Toronto included a chant of “let’s speak openly – we don’t want to see any Zionists!” and open calls for a new Intifada. The last Intifada (uprising), which took place from 2000 to 2005, would be characterized by a string of suicide bombings against Israeli civilian targets.
In the wake of the Oct. 7 attacks, some of the most unadorned praise for the violence from an official Canadian source was a statement issued by CUPE Local 3906, which represents sessional faculty at McMaster University. “Palestine is rising, long live the resistance,” wrote the union’s official Twitter account as the first reports of slaughter and mass shootings emerged from southern Israel.
In 2019, another CUPE local, 3902, would be involved in
hosting a literal Palestinian terrorist at its offices as a guest speaker. Issam Al Yamani was a longtime member of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, a group that committed widespread plane hijackings throughout the 1970s before moving on to suicide bombings and assassinations.
Ordered deported from Canada in the early 2000s on the grounds that Canada could not allow a terrorist sleeper cell to fester, Al Yamani has
maintained his Canadian address thanks to an unending series of appeals.
CUPE 3902 described him as a “Palestinian activist/trade unionist on the Palestinian workers’ movement.”
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